A defendant in the Bolotnaya case is going blind in a pre-trial detention center

Those involved in the Bolotnaya case are in need of urgent medical attention. The lawyer for Left Front activist Vladimir Akimenkov and Moscow State University student Yaroslav Belousov told PublicPost that he has been seeking examinations for his clients to no avail.

On September 20, a petition was published on the Internet demanding the rescue of Vladimir Akimenkov. About two thousand people asked the Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia, Vladimir Lukin, and the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in Moscow, Anatoly Tikhomirov, to transfer the activist to a hospital. “His vision, already poor at the time of his arrest, began to deteriorate catastrophically during his imprisonment in the pre-trial detention center. ... Today he sees only the top two lines of the ophthalmological table in one eye, and none in the other! The diagnosis is iris coloboma and congenital atrophy of the optic nerve - leaves no hope that the situation can be corrected sometime later,” the petition states.

“Now many people say that Akimenkov is losing his sight, that he is almost blind, but all this happened before. His state of health has not changed fundamentally. We talk about this at every extension of his detention,” the activist’s lawyer, Vladimir Agranovsky, told PublicPost. The diagnosis previously given to Akimenkov by doctors was that he was discharged from the army. I have documents on this matter in my hands. Akimenkov himself simply did not register his disability - he did not know that he would end up in a pre-trial detention center.”

“I wouldn’t say that there are any draconian conditions in the pre-trial detention center, but in prison all a person’s illnesses worsen. As for vision, those who see poorly always have their vision deteriorate even more. We’ve talked about this more than once. I’m all I showed these documents many times, I appealed to the European Court. Next week representatives of the Human Rights Council should come to Akimenkov. We could choose another preventive measure for Akimenkov. We will continue to submit petitions,” the lawyer said.

Agranovsky also said that he was seeking an examination for another person involved in the “Bolotnaya case” - Yaroslav Belousov, a student at Moscow State University, an activist of the national democratic movement “Russian Civil Union”. “I sent an application to the pre-trial detention center with a request to include materials in the case of Yaroslav Belousov, who has a situation similar to Akimenkov - myopia, vision minus nine and minus five. For Belousov, thank God, this does not amount to a disability,” the lawyer said. I want to draw attention to Yaroslav Belousov, because with such vision he is accused of precisely throwing an unidentified object at a riot police officer. This in itself, under other circumstances, would sound simply ridiculous.”

According to the lawyer, Belousov and Akimenkov ended up in a pre-trial detention center only because they could not escape in time. “They weren’t going to participate in such riots because they were not prepared. Those who are more experienced, I saw on video, know how to retreat, how to behave, they won’t just get caught,” he believes. — Akimenkov and Belousov there are no diseases that are not included in a specific list that prevent one from staying in a pre-trial detention center. In that list there are diseases that are better to die immediately (in total, the FSIN list includes 40 diseases, including HIV stage four, tuberculosis, cancer at the last stage - PublicPost) Initially, the detention centers do not set out to carry out torture, but even if a person does not have serious illnesses, but he is unhealthy, staying in a pre-trial detention center becomes painful for him. I do not like the word “torture,” but it results in inhumane treatment, which is mentioned in the third European article. Convention on Human Rights. All this happens because there is an attitude to arrest at every opportunity.”